The fruits of a functional approach for psychological science

The current paper introduces relational frame theory (RFT) as a functional contextual approach to complex human behaviour and examines how this theory has contributed to our understanding of several key phenomena in psychological science. I will first briefly outline the philosophical foundation of RFT and then examine its conceptual basis and core concepts. Thereafter, I provide an overview of the empirical findings and applications that RFT has stimulated in a number of key domains such as language development, linguistic generativity, rule‐following, analogical reasoning, intelligence, theory of mind, psychopathology and implicit cognition.     

A place for nouns and a place for verbs? A critical review of neurocognitive data on grammatical-class effects

It is generally held that noun processing is specifically sub-served by temporal areas, while the neural underpinnings of verb processing are located in the frontal lobe. However, this view is now challenged by a significant body of evidence accumulated over the years. Moreover, the results obtained so far on the neural implementation of noun and verb processing appear to be quite inconsistent. The present review briefly describes and critically re-considers the anatomo-correlative, neuroimaging, MEG, TMS and cortical stimulation studies on nouns and verbs with the aim of assessing the consistency of their results, particularly within techniques. The paper also addresses the question as to whether the inconsistency of the data could be due to the variety of the tasks used. However, it emerged that neither the different investigation techniques used nor the different cognitive tasks employed fully explain the variability of the data. In the final section we thus suggest that the main reason for the emergence of inconsistent data in this field is that the cerebral circuits underlying noun and verb processing are not spatially segregated, at least for the spatial resolution currently used in most neuroimaging studies.     

Persistent operational synchrony within brain default-mode network and self-processing operations in healthy subjects

Based on the theoretical analysis of self-consciousness concepts, we hypothesized that the spatio-temporal pattern of functional connectivity within the default-mode network (DMN) should persist unchanged across a variety of different cognitive tasks or acts, thus being task-unrelated. This supposition is in contrast with current understanding that DMN activated when the subjects are resting and deactivated during any attention-demanding cognitive tasks. To test our proposal, we used, in retrospect, the results from our two early studies (Fingelkurts, 1998; Fingelkurts et al., 2003). In both studies for the majority of experimental trails we indeed found a constellation of operationally synchronized cortical areas (indexed as DMN) that was persistent across all studied experimental conditions in all subjects. Furthermore, we found three major elements comprising this DMN: two symmetrical occipito-parieto-temporal and one frontal spatio-temporal patterns. This new data directly supports the notion that DMN has a specific functional connotation - it provides neurophysiologic basis for self-processing operations, namely first-person perspective taking and an experience of agency.     

Syntactic processing in the human brain: what we know, what we don't know, and a suggestion for how to proceed

For every claim in the neuroimaging literature about a particular brain region supporting syntactic processing, there exist other claims implicating the target region in different linguistic processes, and, in many cases, in non-linguistic cognitive processes (e.g., Blumstein, 2009). We argue that traditional group analysis methods in neuroimaging may obscure functional specificity because of inter-subject anatomical variability (Fedorenko & Kanwisher, 2009). In Fedorenko, Hsieh, Nieto-Castanon, Whitfield-Gabrieli, and Kanwisher (2010) we presented a functional localizer that allows quick and reliable identification of key language-sensitive regions in each individual brain. This approach enables pooling data from corresponding functional regions across subjects rather than from the same locations in stereotaxic space that may differ functionally due to inter-subject anatomical variability. In the current paper we demonstrate that the individual-subjects functional localization approach is superior to the traditional methods in its ability to distinguish among conditions in a brain region’s response. This ability is at the core of all neuroimaging research and is critical for answering questions of functional specialization (e.g., does a brain region specialize for processing syntactic aspects of the linguistic signal), which is in turn essential for making inferences about the precise computations conducted in each brain region. Based on our results, we argue that supplementing existing methods with an individual-subjects functional localization approach may lead to a clearer picture of the neural basis of syntactic processing, as it has in some other domains, such as high-level vision (e.g., Kanwisher, 2010) and social cognition (e.g., Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003).     

Are imaging and lesioning convergent methods for assessing functional specialisation?: investigations using an artificial neural network

This article presents an investigation of the relationship between lesioning and neuroimaging methods of assessing functional specialisation, using synthetic brain imaging (SBI) and lesioning of a connectionist network of past-tense formation. The model comprised two processing ‘routes’: one was a direct route between layers of input and output units, while the other, indirect, route featured an intermediate layer of processing units. Emergent specialisation within the network was assessed (1) by lesioning either the direct or indirect route and measuring past-tense performance for regular and irregular verbs, and (2) by measuring functional activation in each route when processing each verb type (SBI). SBI and lesioning approaches failed to converge when network activation was summed over each route in our SBI approach. Examination of individual network solutions suggested that the verb types might be using the indirect route differently in terms of the pattern of activation across the route, rather than in terms of gross activation. A subsequent SBI analysis compared patterns of activation in the indirect route and confirmed that these patterns were more similar between regular-type verbs than between regular and irregular verbs. As the spatial and temporal resolution of neuroimaging techniques improves, the results of this investigation suggest that the key to finding functional specialisation will be to distinguish local coding differences across behaviours that are the results of developmental processes. Other analyses suggest that lesioning data may be limited because, with increasing damage, they reveal the resting activations of a computational system rather than a computational specialisation per se.     

Effets sur le jugement socioprofessionnel des explications causales en termes d’effort et de pouvoir d’autrui dans une situation de succès

Does only refer to effort or powerful others (hierarchy intervention) to explain a success have an effect on evaluation ? In this short note article, we propose to develop some results obtained by Chambon (2005) and Dompnier and Pansu (2007). Two causal explanation types have been studied (effort and powerful others) in a socio-professional evaluation. Our results showed that effort differs from those in term of others authority only in motivational evaluation. However, these two types of explanations lead to similar evaluation in term of institutional reinforcement (access to leader status) and socio-professional utility. Deferential explanations lead more socio-professional desirability than effort explanations.     

Role of medial prefrontal cortex in representing one’s own subjective emotional responses: A preliminary study

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been implicated in attending to one’s own emotional states, but the role of emotional valence in this context is not understood. We examined valence-specific BOLD activity in a previously validated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm. Ten healthy subjects viewed emotional pictures and categorized their experience as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. All three categories activated a common region within mPFC. Subtraction of neutral from pleasant or unpleasant conditions instead revealed ventromedial PFC (vmPFC), suggesting that this region represents emotional valence. During exteroceptive attention, greater mPFC responses were observed in response to emotional relative to neutral stimuli, consistent with studies implicating mPFC in the top-down modulation of emotion-biased attention. These findings may help to integrate the two proposed roles of mPFC in emotional representation and top-down modulation of subcortical structures.     

Silent music reading: Auditory imagery and visuotonal modality transfer in singers and non-singers

In daily life, responses are often facilitated by anticipatory imagery of expected targets which are announced by associated stimuli from different sensory modalities. Silent music reading represents an intriguing case of visuotonal modality transfer in working memory as it induces highly defined auditory imagery on the basis of presented visuospatial information (i.e. musical notes). Using functional MRI and a delayed sequence matching-to-sample paradigm, we compared brain activations during retention intervals (10 s) of visual (VV) or tonal (TT) unimodal maintenance versus visuospatial-to-tonal modality transfer (VT) tasks. Visual or tonal sequences were comprised of six elements, white squares or tones, which were low, middle, or high regarding vertical screen position or pitch, respectively (presentation duration: 1.5 s). For the cross-modal condition (VT, session 3), the visuospatial elements from condition VV (session 1) were re-defined as low, middle or high “notes” indicating low, middle or high tones from condition TT (session 2), respectively, and subjects had to match tonal sequences (probe) to previously presented note sequences. Tasks alternately had low or high cognitive load. To evaluate possible effects of music reading expertise, 15 singers and 15 non-musicians were included. Scanner task performance was excellent in both groups. Despite identity of applied visuospatial stimuli, visuotonal modality transfer versus visual maintenance (VT > VV) induced “inhibition” of visual brain areas and activation of primary and higher auditory brain areas which exceeded auditory activation elicited by tonal stimulation (VT > TT). This transfer-related visual-to-auditory activation shift occurred in both groups but was more pronounced in experts. Frontoparietal areas were activated by higher cognitive load but not by modality transfer. The auditory brain showed a potential to anticipate expected auditory target stimuli on the basis of non-auditory information and sensory brain activation rather mirrored expectation than stimulation. Silent music reading probably relies on these basic neurocognitive mechanisms.     

Two distinct neural networks functionally connected to the human hippocampus during pattern separation tasks

Previous studies from the human, rodent, and computational research have identified the hippocampus as a core structure mediating pattern separation. However, these investigations have generally focused on the role of distinct subregions of the hippocampus. Less well-understood is how the human hippocampus interacts with other brain regions to support pattern separation. The purpose of this study was to identify the functional networks connected to the hippocampus during delayed matching-to-sample pattern separation tasks promoting either spatial or temporal interference. Results revealed that the hippocampus was functionally connected to two distinct networks. The first network was characterized by correlated activation with the hippocampus primarily in bilateral temporal regions. This network was differentially related to spatial and temporal conditions, suggesting hippocampal connectivity to this network is modulated by interference type. A secondary network was characterized by correlations between the left hippocampus and several other sparsely distributed brain regions, including bilateral cerebellum and frontal and temporal cortices. This network was not modulated by interference type, suggesting that it may be a domain-general pattern separation network. We suggest that the hippocampus may play a role in integrating information from these networks to support performance on pattern separation tasks.     

Investigating Constituent Order Change With Elicited Pantomime: A Functional Account of SVO Emergence

One of the most basic functions of human language is to convey who did what to whom. In the world's languages, the order of these three constituents (subject [S], verb [V], and object [O]) is uneven, with SOV and SVO being most common. Recent experiments using experimentally elicited pantomime provide a possible explanation of the prevalence of SOV, but extant explanations for the prevalence of SVO could benefit from further empirical support. Here, we test whether SVO might emerge because (a) SOV is not well suited for describing reversible events (a woman pushing a boy) and (b) pressures to be efficient and mention subjects before objects conspire to rule out many other alternatives. We tested this by asking participants to describe reversible and non‐reversible events in pantomime, and we instructed some participants to be consistent in the form of their gestures and to teach them to the experimenter. These manipulations led to the emergence of SVO in speakers of both English (SVO) and Turkish (SOV).